Our look is the result of reader comments, our own experimentation, and feedback from distribution channels. Distinctive covers complement our distinctive approach to technical topics, breathing personality and life into potentially dry subjects.

The animal on the cover of SVG Essentials is a great argus pheasant (Argusianus argus). This pheasant can be found in Malaysia, Thailand, Sumatra, and Borneo, where it lives in tropical rainforests. The males have blue faces, black crowns, and short crests; their under parts are mottled brown. The iridescent spots on their wings and tail feathers aid in attracting females. Female argus pheasants are smaller than males and lack their ornate plumage.

The great argus pheasant's wings can continue to grow into the bird's sixth year. Its tail feathers are the longest of all birds, measuring up to 5.7 feet. Some cultures use these feathers in their headdresses.

Jeffrey Holcomb was the production editor, and Ellie Cutler was the copyeditor for SVG Essentials. Sue Willing was the proofreader. Jane Ellin, Darren Kelly, and Claire Cloutier provided quality control. Derek Di Matteo provided production assistance. J. David Eisenberg and Brenda Miller wrote the index.

Ellie Volckhausen designed the cover of this book, based on a series design by Edie Freedman. The cover image is a 19th-century engraving from the Dover Pictorial Archive. Emma Colby produced the cover layout with QuarkXPress 4.1 using Adobe's ITC Garamond font.

David Futato designed the interior layout based on a series design by Nancy Priest. The print version of this book was created by translating the DocBook XML markup of its source files into a set of groff macros using a filter developed at O'Reilly & Associates by Norman Walsh. Steve Talbott designed and wrote the underlying macro set on the basis of the GNU troff -mgs macros; Lenny Muellner adapted them to XML and implemented the book design. The GNU groff text formatter Version 1.11.1 was used to generate PostScript output. The text and heading fonts are ITC Garamond Light and Garamond Book; the code font is Constant Willison. The illustrations that appear in the book were produced by Robert Romano and Jessamyn Read using Macromedia FreeHand 9 and Adobe Photoshop 6. This colophon was written by Linley Dolby.

The online edition of this book was created by the Safari production group (John Chodacki, Becki Maisch, and Madeleine Newell) using a set of Frame-to-XML conversion and cleanup tools written and maintained by Erik Ray, Benn Salter, John Chodacki, and Jeff Liggett.